Scrape/Scratch/Dig: Richard Wentworth

About

The film Scrape/Scratch/Dig explores different notions of the ways in which cities are ordered and marked. It brings together images of a senior cartographer working on the ‘A-Z', along with that of a road-marking crew pacing out and re-writing the actual surfaces of the city. Both of the tasks involve the craft of defining and redefining the ground upon which people walk and the ways in which they may interact with the city. Even when nature makes an appearance — in the form of an expansive sky — it is still marked by the vapour trails of passing aircraft leaving fading traces of their brief presence. Richard Wentworth's work often includes the displacement and juxtaposition of common and familiar objects. The appearance of things in unfamiliar places and altered circumstance produces imaginative readings and new possibilities. Scrape/Scratch/Dig (2001) sees a continuation of an interest in the urban and the seemingly banal. Just as Wentworth presents everyday objects in much of his work, here he explores the every-day activities that help construct the systems we use to navigate our way through the city. The film was originally part of Wentworth's An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty, which took place in an abandoned warehouse at Kings Cross, London in 2002, it was also shown in the Global Cities exhibition at Tate Modern in 2007.